El diario del futuro

La muerte del empresario Anacleto Angelini, la mayor fortuna de Chile, devela nuevamente que la crisis de los diarios está más cerca de su propia negligencia que de la expansión de internet. Los diarios (y la televisión en igual medida) vaciaron todos los elogios posibles sobre Angelini, olvidando sus influencias políticas sobre senadores de la Democracia Cristiana y la coalición gobernante, la depredación que provocaron sus pesqueras en el norte de Chile, su conservadora estrategia empresarial, la contaminación de un santuario de la naturaleza protegido internacionalmente y su, al menos cuestionable, gestión laboral. Pero de esto, poco y nada. Bob Cauthorn, vicepresidente del San Francisco Chronicles y presidente de de Digital Media, ha repetido muchas veces que el futuro de los diarios no es tan negro como se presenta, que su caída coincide con una baja importante en la credibilidad y la calidad de sus contenidos, más que en razones exógenas, que obviamente abultan el fenómeno. Mientras más se alejen los diarios de las inquietudes de los ciudadanos más vulnerable será su futuro. Todavía nadie logra demostrar que puede vivir con avisaje y sin audiencias.

Por Jack Schafer

Slate.com

As newspaper circulation cartwheels into the abyss and print advertisers defect to the Web, publishers keep profit margins high by snipping, shearing, and slicing costs. The large-wingspan Wall Street Journal recently shrank its page size to the industry standard to save an estimated $18 million annually, and the New York Times will soon follow.
Dollar-pinching publishers are now paying experienced reporters and editors to leave their jobs. Buyouts will soon reduce the Los Angeles Times to 850 journalists, about three-quarters of its peak.* The San Francisco Chronicle has announced plans to cut the newsroom from 400 to 300. The San Jose Mercury News employed 400 journalists seven years ago and will soon have only 200 crashing the keyboards. Similar stories can be told about the Dallas Morning News, the Boston Globe, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Baltimore Sun, and other newspapers. Foreign bureaus are being shuttered, and full-time arts slots at newspapers in Atlanta, Minneapolis, Chicago, and elsewhere have been eliminated or downgraded.How many journalists can a newspaper jettison before its hair falls out and its ribs start showing?

The connection between quality and head count would seem intuitive, but a dip into the microfilm archives of the New York Times and Washington Post shows that decent newspapers have been produced with far fewer hands.

In the last three or four decades, newsroom staffs have ballooned almost everywhere. Today's Times employs about 1,200 newsroom staffers and the Post about 800. But 35 years ago, each produced a quality daily with about half that number, according to Leon V. Sigal's 1973 study, Reporters and Officials: The Organization and Politics of Newsmaking. Sigal found that the Times employed 500 "reporters, editors, and copyreaders" and the Post about 400 at the time.